See the video above (if you can’t see it, check it on Youtube). Skip to 1:20 if you’re too lazy to see the bass tweaking in the beginning.
To refer what’s happening in the video: Steve Angello’s Beatport #1 hit “KNAS” is basically put together from samples taken directly from Vengeance Future House Vol.3 package. You could make the same track with Ableton Live in two minutes. (The “hit melody” riff is “VFH2 128BPM Capone Kit : VFH2 128BPM Capone Melody 2”)
I think it was Sebastian Leger who first wrote on his Twitter about it some weeks ago, DJ Flight retweeted it soon after and finally Beatportal covered it this morning. Interestingly, the Beatportal post was removed in a couple of hours, as well as the video explaining the stunt.
When Angello’s doing tracks like that, I really can’t tell if he is arrogant, lacking skills or just plain stupid. Or is it the customer who is stupid when buying anything offered under the name of Swedish House Mafia? I really can’t tell any other artist who could (or even would try to) bring a track to Beatport TOP10 which is put together just from Vengeance samples.
edit: On his Twitter, Steve Angello was defending himself saying: “Everyone can sample . Its about finding the sample , how you use the sample , how you produce the track .. Look at every single hip hop track from gang starr , kanye west , jay z , to anyone u can name .. They always sample but makes a hit out of it .. Look at daft punk , even prodigy & chemical brothers Its easy to judge after the sample is discovered. Be the first to use it or stop judging.”
Comparing KNAS kind of sampling to Prodigy and Chemical Brothers doesn’t make Steve really look any smarter. D’oh!
Thanks for the great comments about vinyl digitalizing. Hopefully they’ve been as helpful for other digitalizers as they’ve been to me. With the help of the almighty Google and the opinions shared, I’ve finally reached a certain routin – or workflow – with the digitalizing process. It means, by following a simple step-by-step workflow the speed and quality of digitalizing has improved a lot.
The following vinyl digitalizing method is done with Ableton Live, iTunes and Audacity.
The full entry of Vinyl Digitalizing can be found here. Please add the possible comments there.
Vinyl digitalizing is going well. After Audacity crashed a couple of times I’ve used Ableton Live for recording and normalizing the tracks. Last night I digitalized a nice amount of bootleg breaks from my collection.
The latest questionmark has been the Grado DJ200 cartridges and needles I bought. As I’ve mentioned, the sound quality of Grado is outstanding, but DJ Orkidea pointed out that the sound volume is somehow quiet. He had noticed that compared to the basic Stanton cartridges the volume of Grado is 2-4db more quiet. I tested the sound with Ortofon Pro and noticed 3db difference.
OK, you have a gain switch on your mixer, but the question remains: how much does the gaining affect the dynamics of the sound and the overall sound quality? Because when you gain the sound coming from the channel you also raise the amount of noise. Right?
On my last gig in Kalajoki I played one digitalized vinyl which sounded fine in the club environment, but I had to gain it quite a lot. I saw a way on Logic Pro to raise the volume level without causing any clipping which would be a perfect for this problem – I just wish there would be a way to make this as a batch.
The full entry of Vinyl Digitalizing can be found here. Please add the possible comments there.
– The first 10 tracks are now in digital form. Whee. The first digitalized track was BT – Flaming June (BT & PvD mix).
– Grado DJ200 sound quality is amazing. I’m VERY satisfied with it. It’s worth every cent.
– Before starting to record, I tried a couple of programs:
* Sample Manager for normalizing. Very good, but very expensive. No use, sorry.
* Final Vinyl. Only for use with iGriffin products. No thanks.
* Analogue Ripper had nice features – iTunes support, track splitting etc. However, the user interface was horrible. The price, 30 dollars, was ok, but the usability was that poor that I decided not to pay.
– Finally I ended up using Audacity. The normalizing feature was very poor so no normalizing until I find a better software. Recommendations?
– As I mentioned in the comments of the previous entry, I decided to make two copies of the tracks: One .wav copy for playing and archiving purposes and .mp3 copy for portable music players and iTunes music library.
– I need a new hard drive.